Wine Wits (#022): Mornington Peninsula, Sam Harris & Writing into the Void
The latest from grape juice drinker Aleksandar Draganic
Hi friend!
June has begun and it still doesn’t seize to amaze me how fast time’s flying by us. Just a few months ago I was reading up on the MW program, chatting to industry peeps on whether or not it’s worth it, and boom, here I am waiting for the exam gates to open tomorrow. Needless to say, my brain is exploding with information and I need to find a way how to project everything I’ve learned properly. Having brain vomit is the worst thing you can do at an exam. If I pass, I’ll start a series on this (but you’ll need to wait until September).
WINE I’M DRINKING
Ten Minutes by Tractor 'Up the Hill' Pinot Noir 2021 (NSFW, 90 SGD)
It’s no secret that some of Australia’s best Pinot Noir comes from Victoria. While I prefer styles of Geelong and Gippsland (slightly fuller, more robust), The Mornington Peninsula has a magical touch in its Pinots that one cannot ignore. The region, surrounded by water on three sides, is best represented by Ten Minutes by Tractor. It’s cool here and the growing season is long because of it, hence you get an exact reflection of that in the wines.
The 2021 vintage was slightly cooler, so the grapes took a bit of time to ripen, resulting in solid fruit concentration and high acidity. My good friend that was drinking this with me picked up notes of “a very well-renovated apartment”. Why, I can’t fully explain, but I assume it’s due to the strong reduction that hits on the first crack and then combines with gorgeous aromas of bergamot oil, pink roses, almond tart, wild strawberries and unripe blackcurrant. Structurally, this is unfortunately too young (didn’t budge after 6 hours of decanting), but hopefully we’ll see more soon.
BOOK I’M READING
Letter to a Christian Nation by Sam Harris
After publishing The End of Faith, Sam Harris got flooded with angry letters from Christians calling him out for his lack of belief in God. So, he shot back with Letter to a Christian Nation. Now, I don’t tend to get involved with these types of books often, because they kinda lack sense to me, but this was sitting in my Kindle for years and I never got around to read it. Letter to a Christian Nation is luckily only 96 pages and was a breeze to get through, but a painful one. I’m far from a religious person, so I’m not going to get into defending any views here (you’ll conclude what you have to conclude for yourself if you ever read this garbage), but what I will say is that this read like a 10-year-old was bitching about the other kids stealing his lunchbox.
This book infuriated me so much, to the point where the thought of finding Sam Harris and telling him to shut the fuck up crossed my mind several times. Harris doesn't just think religious beliefs are wrong; he thinks they're straight-up dangerous and need to be wiped out. In his earlier book, he even says some beliefs are so dangerous it's ethical to kill people for having them, specifically targeting Islamists and feeding into Islamophobia. But in Letter to a Christian Nation, he makes it clear he sees traditional Christians as just as dangerous as Muslims. Painting all religious people as dangerous, intolerant maniacs is seriously disturbing. What's worse, Harris comes off as just as intolerant and hateful as the medieval Inquisitors he criticises. I haven’t read a more toxic book in a long time and I hope that Harris starts therapy, it’ll do him good.
RANDOM THOUGHT
Sometimes I feel like I’m writing and creating content into a void, but I’ve recently got approached by people at my wine events telling me they like what I write, so yeah, thank you for that, friends!
As always, thanks for reading - stay thirsty, stay curious.
See ya in a week!
Aleksandar